Autosomal STRs in Croatians

The aim of this study is to analyze variation of nine autosomal STRs (D3S1358, vWA, FGA, THO1, TPOX, CSF1PO, D5S818, D13S317, D7S820) in Croatian mainland population and 5 Adriatic islands in order to investigate Croatian genetic structure and evaluate the usefulness of the studied loci in regional level genetic differentiation. This investigation demonstrates a substantial genetic homogeneity of the Croatian gene pool as revealed by distribution of allelic frequencies, heterozygosity values, number of alleles and allele size variance, allele and genotype sharing data. Considerable heterogeneity in the degree of differentiation is noted at different loci. Locus TPOX shows the lowest level of heterozygosity (59.75%) and FGA the highest (86.42%). GST based on gene diversity and allele size variance is lowest at VWA locus (0.16% and – 0.33%, respectively) and highest at TPOX locus (0.96% and 2.51%). The average coefficients of gene differentiation based on gene diversity (0.53%) and allele size variance (0.49%) point to low levels of population substructuring. Even though a larger sample sizes for villages within islands could have provided a greater power of autosomal STRs in resolving patterns of microevolutionary structuring at regional level, the greatest discriminating power will certainly result when all classes of genetic markers, paternal, maternal and autosomal, will be jointly considered.